“‘A long object just on the edge of the water was discovered astern of the ship. In an instant, the cable was slipped, the alarm sounded, and all hands beat to quarters, but before the ship had made any headway the torpedo exploded under the starboard quarter making a most frightful report.’
So began a letter to the Boston Herald describing CSS H.L. Hunley’s submarine attack that sank the Union blockader USS Housatonic at “about 9 o’clock on one of the coldest nights of the winter,” Feb. 17, 1864, a few miles outside of Charleston’s harbor.
The explosion set off a revolution in naval warfare – for the first time, a manned submarine sank an enemy warship in combat and 160 years later researchers are still looking for more answers on how exactly the Union warship sank.
Theo Parker, a Black man, was on lookout when the torpedo struck the ship. He flew into the air and was instantly killed, making him the first casualty of the explosion, according to the letter.
At first Capt. Charles Pickering, Housatonic’s skipper, thought Parker spotted a blockade runner, reads the letters.
Pickering did not realize “he was the prey, not the hunter that night,” James Spirek, South Carolina’s underwater archaeologist, wrote in an extensive report on Charleston’s harbor during the Civil War.
In an interview with USNI News on the 160th anniversary of the sinking, Spirek said, “perhaps, it’s a miracle goal to find any evidence of the torpedo or the mine that Hunley used that evening,” but that doesn’t mean there won’t be more attempts to determine what happened to Housatonic.
The sloop and its officers and crew are often passed over in the popular recounting of Hunley’s historic attack.
“In our expedition there [to the Housatonic wreckage site] in 2022, we were attempting to find the blast areas on that starboard rear quarter of the ship, and potentially see if there could be any evidence of the torpedo in there,” Spirek said.
Hunting for pieces of copper buried under the wreck or evidence in the ship’s planking under murky water in shifting sediments is very different from archaeological work on land. Spirek, the head of the Maritime Research Division, wrote, “Unlike many battlefields that may last one day or several days leaving few traces, the siege of Charleston Harbor lasted for four years with a plethora of evidence of the fighting.”
Housatonic had been on station outside the Charleston bar since the fall of 1862 as part of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Commanders of blockaders in the harbor were well aware of Confederate attempts to deploy submarines and submersibles, called Davids, after their designer David Embaugh, to open the port. Since the war’s beginning, they had heard repeatedly that floating mines threatened anchored Union warships. Later, the orders read: Watch out for anchored or mines placed on submerged frames to sink patrollers or attackers.
Three Union ironclads are in those waters, as well as 29 vessels from New England – known as the “Stone Fleet,” “mostly ex-whalers” – which were used to close off Charleston from blockade runners, Spirek’s report on the harbor’s archaeology noted.
Then there were the Confederate’s layered defenses in the water and on land, like Fort Wagner, now submerged, which are integral parts of this battlefield, a template of 19th-century anti-access/area denial.
Further complicating the “search” for Housatonic and Hunley was the early salvaging work done five years or so after the war and in the early 20th century by the Corps of Engineers “trying to remove a hazard to navigation,” even though the wreckage site was on 19th-century charts,
“That’s when they blew up a lot of boilers and things. And that’s when it added quite a bit of scatter around the site,” Spirek said.
In the early 1980s, Clive Cussler, an underwater explorer and best-selling author of books such as “Raise the Titanic,” teamed up with South Carolina’s Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology looking first for Hunley. In those searches they confirmed the basic location of Housatonic.
Spirek added “there was sort of like a 200-meter difference between their coordinates and… modern-day coordinate fusing” that used GPS and “georeferenced nautical charts, including from the Civil War.”
The process to survey and recover legally in Charleston harbor involved? receiving a dredging permit from the Corps of Engineers, a Navy review of the scope of the work and Park Service approval as was done in 1999 and Spirek’s division.
In Hunley’s case, there is also a state commission “to ensure that the submarine and any human remains located in it remain in South Carolina in perpetuity and be displayed in an appropriate manner.”
Housatonic could not be raised in 1864 because the ship’s stern was completely blown off, according to the Herald letter writer.
The Herald letter writer wrote in 1864, “At low tide water is about six feet above the rail of the Housatonic. If the weather moderates her guns and many valuable articles and the paymaster’s safe will be recovered,” reads the letter.
Spirek said that in the Housatonic excavations starting in 1999, the small crews – five to about a dozen – weren’t working blind. They had the design plans for the four-ship Ossipee class indicating living quarters and work and storage spaces “loaded down with coal and provisions.”
“The wreck is completely buried in mud from anywhere from four to eight feet or so,” he said.
The key to later work was locating the water tanks, found on the starboard side forward on the ship. Once that was done, they had an idea of which was the wreck was going. The hydro-probing continued over the years to determine where the explosion actually occurred.
Not every operation leads to recoveries or major discoveries. Describing his last attempt, Spirek said “I kept going a little further based on some wreckage scatters. …we sort of got stuck in this one area that led to nowhere” but one piece of metal. “I should have stopped at the wood [and] expand from there.”
Hunley, located in the Warren Lasch Conservation Center in North Charleston, is where recovered artifacts are sent for conservation. They potentially could be displayed when a museum for the submarine is built or remain a part of its research collection. Spirek estimated that hiring a conservator for three years’ work on 100 Housatonic artifacts would cost $300,000. The archaeological team from his division are paid by the University of South Carolina for what is usually a month.
Hunley was recovered in 2000. The crewmen’s remains were later removed for burial at Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston, and the submarine underwent extensive preservation work and research. Spirek said the submarine “is starting to get real close to being like completely stabilized, [but] it’s always going to be a terminal patient.”
Spirek wants to return to Housatonic, the oft-forgotten ship in this unique naval event. “I’ve got a marker like close to where the water tanks are. So we should be able to find it relatively quickly” to know where they need to be.
“I have no doubt that the damage is there. It’s just a little more expansion of our test unit excavation unit to find that damage” caused by Hunley’s mounted spar that broke through the wooden ship setting off the torpedo’s explosion, he said.
Five Union sailors died in the attack that killed all eight members of Hunley’s crew. Gigs from other blockaders came to the other crewmen’s rescue. Many survived by clinging to Housatonic’s rigging, which was still floating.
“It is feared that many others of the blockade will follow the fate of the Housatonic,” the Herald reported.
None did.
